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Are distributors interested in short films?


Patrick Cooper

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Whaaa???!!!

 

....Wait do you remember Nelson Mandela dying in prison?

 

Freya

 

Nelson Mandela didn't die in Prison, he died of some disease or another in 2012 or 2013 if I remember correctly - probably a good 10+ years after leaving prison. Yes, I'm a history buff. Sorry. And yes, I remember the rise of the Dogma 95 movement as well, including one of it's creators, Lars von Trier. You can see some of his early attempts the Dogma 95 stuff in Riget.

 

 

Wait what about Twin Peaks then?

 

How much mass appeal is enough?

the Elephant Man did $26 million at the box office in 1980.

 

David Lynch even made a movie for Disney.

how much mass appeal does he have to have!?

 

Freya

 

Twin Peaks was hardly what I'd call avant garde or experimental.

 

This is the David Lynch stuff I'm talking about:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_9Tfn3j8ts

 

No matter how much I watch this (and many of his other projects) I fail to see their purpose. Love the music though.

Edited by Landon D. Parks
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Twin Peaks was hardly what I'd call avant garde or experimental.

 

This is the David Lynch stuff I'm talking about:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_9Tfn3j8ts

 

No matter how much I watch this (and many of his other projects) I fail to see their purpose. Love the music though.

 

Ah well I was just disagreeing with what you wrote:

 

None of the, what I would consider to be avant garde directors, like David Lynch have ever achieve mass commercial appeal.

 

 

Yes he has made some funky little shorts for the internet too, and has apparently done a lot of paintings which did not achieve mass commercial success or were intended to but so what?

 

Freya

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Nelson Mandela didn't die in Prison, he died of some disease or another in 2012 or 2013 if I remember correctly - probably a good 10+ years after leaving prison. Yes, I'm a history buff. Sorry.

 

Well at least we seem to be in the same universe on that score then!

 

And yes, I remember the rise of the Dogma 95 movement as well, including one of it's creators, Lars von Trier. You can see some of his early attempts the Dogma 95 stuff in Riget.

 

 

Riget predates Dogma 95 and he wasn't attempting to do Dogma 95 stuff in Riget as the whole premise of the TV series breaks a ton of the Dogma 95 rules. Riget was just shot on a low budget without much in the way of lighting etc. It probably influenced Lars when they came to write the Dogma 95 manifesto but it's nothing like a Dogma 95 movie or an attempt at one.

 

Freya

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Nelson Mandela didn't die in Prison, he died of some disease or another in 2012 or 2013 if I remember correctly - probably a good 10+ years after leaving prison. Yes, I'm a history buff. Sorry.

 

You missed the British humour in that. It's called irony and you have just provided more evidence in support of the theory that Americans don't understand it.

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It's nothing new. The Dogma 95 movement was a big thing when I was a younger child interested in films... Never caught on.

 

This statement is a bit of a contradiction in itself. It was a big thing but it never caught on?

 

Dogme 95 caught on in a big way. There were nearly 40 feature length movies made that were certified as Dogme 95 before they got tired of doing the certification and called an end to it. Even after that there were more Dogme movie made and it went on to influence the style of a lot of stuff subsequently. The Mini DV era eventually came to an end however and people moved on.

 

It's a bit like saying the French New Wave was a big thing but it never caught on.

These were both huge and really popular movements in the history of cinema.

 

It certainly didn't hurt Lars Von Triers career!

 

Freya

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You missed the British humour in that. It's called irony and you have just provided more evidence in support of the theory that Americans don't understand it.

 

Americans are irony deficient. There has been some talk of providing irony supplements, but due to the lack of a social medicine infrastructure, the US will have to wait until a pharmacorpse firm finds a market and exploits it.

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Americans are irony deficient. There has been some talk of providing irony supplements, but due to the lack of a social medicine infrastructure, the US will have to wait until a pharmacorpse firm finds a market and exploits it.

I don't usually bother with the green arrow malarkey but I've made an exception. Thankyou.

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You missed the British humour in that. It's called irony and you have just provided more evidence in support of the theory that Americans don't understand it.

 

My gosh Mark please don't try and explain the British sense of humour to the Americans. The colonists here in Canada barely understand it, unless the joke is punctuated with a reference to hockey or donuts.

 

R,

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Okay, so lets say, hypothecitally, that I made a good feature. What determines it's worth? And who would buy it?

 

A discussion that would take 4-5 hours to answer. How can you say, who would buy it? There are over a thousand film distributors in the world, so who knows?

 

Making the feature is 1/10th the battle, selling it and making money is the other 9/10ths.

 

R,

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My gosh Mark please don't try and explain the British sense of humour to the Americans. The colonists here in Canada barely understand it, unless the joke is punctuated with a reference to hockey or donuts.

 

R,

This was the most British thing I've ever read.

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Okay, so lets say, hypothecitally, that I made a good feature. What determines it's worth? And who would buy it?

 

This is a question for every one who wishes to supply a product to a market... who would buy it, and where to get a distributor... doesn't matter if it's a film, pet rock, or iPhone...

 

You can do this in one of two basic ways... 1) Make the film, then find out long list of distributors, send an intro/promo package... and see if someone bites... 2) decide what 'genre' you like, what the 'market' is for that genre, find a list of distributors who cater to that market... make the film and submit the film to those distributors, or submit the film to fests where those distributors are likely to be in attendance...

 

At a fest, you can host a cocktail party or other event to encourage those distributors on your list to meet you and see the promo package.

 

Of course all of this is expensive, depending... and if one needs strippers or booze flowing like flash flood in the desert... it gets even more expensive...

 

Occasionally lightening strikes and somebody sells who only submitted their 'fine product' to a fest, got a viewing by a large number of distributors and got a deal.

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This was the most British thing I've ever read.

 

 

Well I didn't say...unless the joke is punctuated with a reference to bloody hockey or flippin' donuts. :)

 

R,

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No matter how much I watch this (and many of his other projects) I fail to see their purpose.

 

 

Perhaps the interesting point here is that you do watch Lynchs films. I assume you haven't really watched this particular one over and over again, looking for it's purpose ... but either way you have otherwise entertained the idea of having done so, and concluded from such speculation (or indeed reality) that the result would be the same:

 

A failure to see any purpose.

 

One of my first films (a Super8 film) was called "Seeking Purpose". Made in 1976.

 

Should a film have a purpose? I know propaganda films (such as television ads) have a very visible purpose. But is it a rule, like three act structures, that a film should have a purpose? I find most films don't have any purpose at all. Even television ads. They might think they have some noble cause of course, such as selling hamburgers, but is the work proper in such a cause? Is the purpose of The Revenant to make some sort of statement on climate change?

 

Speaking of which.

 

The climate is close to runaway catastrophe. But it's actually worse that that. A two point four degree rise in temperature is already locked in to the environment, as we speak, due to a number of already known factors, such as the way in which the oceans store heat. In other words what we measure in our thermometers, is lagging behind what the oceans currently possess in terms of what they will release. The trigger point for runaway catastrophe is understood as two degrees.

 

Not that I want to alarm anyone.

 

C

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  • 10 months later...

Well I did have a little bit of success with my short film from a sales perspective. Ive just started offering copies of the film on DVD for sale at my Kangaroo Island-based market stall which is visited by tourists from passing cruise ships. I managed to sell one DVD on Saturday and another DVD on Sunday. I also sell my photos as greeting cards and as larger prints in mattes at the market with most of the images taken on Kangaroo Island. My short film focuses on the natural attractions of the island (mainly it's landscapes and wildlife) so that obviously has some appeal to tourists. A lot of these tourists will buy a something to remind themselves of a place they've visited and a lot of people in general have an appreciation for nature. So it looks like my short film has some decent potential in the tourism market (in particular the Kangaroo Island tourism market.) Though it's never going to be mass-produced or go through official distribution or anything like that. I'll be perfectly happy continuing to sell copies of the film at my market stall and hopefully a few souvenir shops too.

Edited by Patrick Cooper
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